


i hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums (we're gonna die young)

by defloriennes (fahrentiam)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: e018 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, it's a fix-it in the sense that juno isn't here to break nureyev's heart, sorry y'all, this hurt to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 05:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11433717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fahrentiam/pseuds/defloriennes
Summary: He knows it is foolish to hope, it is foolish to think that he will hear a heartbeat, a breath, from behind that door, but Peter Nureyev is nothing if not a fool. He relishes in the agony of sound because at least then he can lie to himself, and Peter Nureyev is nothing if not a very good liar.orThe Final Resting Place AU that doesn't actually help anything, just hurts more.





	i hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums (we're gonna die young)

He knows it is foolish to hope, but Peter Nureyev is nothing if not a fool. 

The sound still echoes in the corridor, that horrible screeching static, but it is better than silence. His shoulder aches from throwing himself against the door, his neck smarting from that thing and body bruised from the tireless struggle. His fingers are bloody from pounding at the door, his throat sore from screaming Juno’s name. He hurts, but the doubt is worse. He just wants to do something. If he could tear through that door to grab Juno— that absolutely horrible fool—, he would have, would have torn him out of there. Would have kept him safe. If he died, that was okay. He supposed it would have been cruel poetic justice. If the one selfless thing he had ever done was the last thing he ever did. The thought nearly makes him sick. Since when was he willing to die for someone else? 

He waits in the moments of cacophony, relishes in it because silence is final and at least when the sound of the world ending still reverberates around him he can pretend that it is the only thing masking the gentle sound of breathing on the other side of the door. He can pretend that when it stops he will call out and Juno will answer and they will laugh at the luck that they are both alive. That they will kiss and retreat, leaning against each other and tottering far from this room, this tomb beneath the sands, and that he will take Juno away from this dark, dirty planet that has brought him so much sorrow and bounce from star to star until the end of their days. He can almost feel Juno’s skin against his own, a promise of a future that hangs unfulfilled. He relishes in the agony of sound because at least then he can lie to himself, and Peter Nureyev is nothing if not a very good liar.

But the sound fades, and the silence stretches, and it feels so much like a blade at his neck that he sobs out Juno’s name again, pounding his bloody fist against the door.

“Juno? Juno, you impossible idiot, answer me!” Silence. His heart clenches. “Answer me, please!” The crack in his voice makes him flinch, since when did he become so besotted over someone like Juno? He knows the answer to that question, he had been a lost cause since the day he met him, and he knows that, but it is too painful to say, to think. It feels too much like he has lost him already when he thinks that. He hits the door again, hand leaving a bloody smear, pain blooming, and it enough to drive away his thoughts.

The silence is suffocating. He is suffocating, the entire world reduced to a pinprick of fading light, locked away at the other side of an airlock. “Juno!” His name is more a sob than a word, “Juno, no, no, no,” he repeats until he is interrupted by a beep so loud he almost trips in his surprise. The door hisses open. Silence. He stumbles forward then, hand curled against his chest. He is greeted by no cheerful voice, tired and pained, but alive, nor by the smell of ozone and hot metal. The uncertainty yawning underneath him is worse than whatever it is he will find in there.

The room is deathly still, Purus Egg sitting placidly on the pedestal, looking exactly how it did before Juno had gone all self-sacrificing hero. Boxes are strewn across the floor, elaborate lab equipment smashed from the struggle, but apart from that, it looks untouched. No scorch marks, no lingering energy of death and destruction. It makes his heart swell with tentative, careful hope. But he cannot see Miasma, nor Juno, in all of the mayhem and for a moment his mind floods with questions. 

Did it go off?

If it didn’t, what was that noise?

Was it not some weapon, was it another teleporter?

Where did they go?

Where is Miasma?

Where is Juno?

Juno?

He is nearly halfway across the room when he stops, turns. The edge of a dark coat peeks around a pile of collapsed boxes. Thoughts jittering to a stop with him as he scrambles, stumbling on bottles of nutrient capsules, pulls the crushed cardboard away, thought transferred into frantic kinetic energy.

Juno lies in front of him, half on his side, glassy eyes barely open, coat splayed under his twisted body like a fan. His long hair is dark, wet with blood, torn out of the tie he usually wears it in, nutrient capsules scattered around him like a sea of infinite white stars. Left hand stretched out towards the door, the other clutching his laser pistol, cradling it against his chest. His delicate dark skin is bruised, clothing mussed and torn. 

His chest is horribly still. 

Nureyev scrambles to him, drops to his knees, bloody hand slick against Juno’s warm skin as he fumbles for a pulse. Nothing. He can’t hear anything, and it is a horrible, flat nothing, because his own heart is hammering faster than he can think and he wants to tear that beat in half in stuff it into Juno’s chest, hell, tear his heart out and give it to Juno, because he’s practically already done that once, right? He’s already given him his name and his trust, what’s a heart when it feels like the one he has is going to shatter itself onto the cliffs of his ribs without Juno alive and well in front of him? But he cannot, and that thought centers him. He cannot do these things. He cannot unmake the hurting parts of himself just as he cannot bring Juno back.

He is still warm. He tries to shake that thought, not still warm, of course he’s warm, because he’s—because he is fine. Juno is warm under his hands, but he is farther away than anything has ever been. That is all he is. Still warm, and gone. Not all, he cannot even pretend that is all he is because he is everything to Nureyev, but now he can define him only in brutal, shallow terms. Anything more and he would probably fall apart. There is no breath, no pulse. Juno’s eye is dripping blood, trailing dark trails across the side of his face, and it smears, even more, when Nureyev hauls him up into his lap. It doesn’t take a genius intellect to know when he is too late. Weird alien tech in his head, blood pooling from his ruined eye, body bruised from the fight, it was just too much. Too much blood loss. Too much stress, too much, not enough, could he have stopped it if he had been quick enough? Nureyev might be a clever man, quick and deadly as quicksilver, normally he can think at a million miles an hour but—he is still warm, and it is a cruel punch to his gut, because still warm means still saveable. He knows, in the horrible way that he wishes he didn’t, but he does from years of harsh living, that if he could get him help soon, if he could get to a hospital, a doctor, he could be saved. That there was surely still brain activity, that even rudimentary science from centuries ago could save him at this point, still warm and so vital. So loved. But there is no doctor. There is no hospital. He does not entertain saveable much longer. He is not saveable, he is— Juno is— Juno—is dead. Peter Nureyev is nothing if not a fool, but he is not an idiot. 

So instead, he grieves. He grieves for the painfully saveable man in his arms, the man that he was foolish enough to fall in love with, who he told his name to. The man he was not fast enough to protect. The man he was going to run away with. Harsh, ugly sobs shake his form, making his already sore body smart, but it does not matter because Juno is cooling in his lap, because Miasma is gone, but what does it really matter, if Juno is gone with her? What is that victory worth if the person he was fighting to save was the cost of victory?

Just think of me as the price tag, Nureyev. The cost of a fresh shot at the world.

Juno was so willing to die to save the world, he believed in that sort of thing. Heroic sacrifices.He does not, never wanted, to think about Juno like that. Juno was too precious to him, even though it took losing him to realize that. He had wanted to throttle Juno, then, that fool, that horrible, cruel, self-sacrificing idiot, for saying that. He might have been willing to die to save the world, but Nureyev was not willing to let him. Peter Nureyev was nothing if not selfish, and if he could have pulled him out of there, dragged him kicking and screaming off that planet while Miasma wiped it clean, he would have done it in a heartbeat. Even if Juno hated him until the end of his days because at the very least Juno would still be alive. 

He does not know how long he sits there, clutching the body— clutching Juno— to his chest, nose buried in his hair, letting himself crumble so completely, but eventually, he knows he must leave. If there is anyone left in this facility they could come up and kill him in the blink of an eye. He doesn’t think he would mind, honestly. But he must leave. He has things to do, and the thought is almost laughable because he doesn’t want to do anything, he wants to stay here with Juno and imagine a heartbeat, imagine he is just unconscious, that he hit his head and needs rest. He knows he must go, and for the first time in a very long time, he is unsure what to do. What does he do with Juno? How is he going to tell Rita? What does he do now? What is left?

He does not know the answer to that. But he does know one thing.

Peter Nureyev is nothing if not a fool, nothing if not selfish and in love, and as far as he is concerned, he wishes he died in that tomb as well. But he did not, and there is nothing crueler than that. He knows that Juno is dead, and he is not, and he does not know what to do.

He isn't sure he wants to.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: realized i left out some of it out when i transferred from google docs.
> 
> sorry. not really. i wrote this at like 3am so sorry if it's not great. title definitely not taken from Die Young by Ke$ha, in particularly the deconstructed version which I was definitely not listening to while writing this. some dialogue and description taken directly from the episode. this is the first fic I've written in a while, maybe I'll do some more for Penumbra, I'm not really sure, if I've broken any hearts maybe I'll do some fix-it for my fix-it. hit me up in the comments if you want to see more. 
> 
> also i know that juno is canonically genderfluid, but as far as ease of writing and general coherency i pretty much stuck (and will stick to) male descriptors because it seems like that's what they do in canon, as well as because, well, it gets confusing unless done well, and i do not think i'd be able to do it in a coherent way. hopefully that didn't bother anybody.


End file.
